


try this trick and spin it

by stoprobbers



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Surreal, because what the fuck else would the 24 or so hours after the end of ST2 be other than surreal?, idk man this fic went back and forth to a lot of places over the last couple weeks, the main mood i'm going for here is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13257468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: He's lost his mind.He can still hear his brother's screams bouncing around inside his skull, feel the grit of drying sweat under his clothes, taste Nancy's mouth on his tongue. He should want to cry, or rage, and he knows he's never going to sleep again. But he's pretty sure he's about to start laughing.





	try this trick and spin it

He's lost his mind. 

He can still hear his brother's screams bouncing around inside his skull, feel the grit of drying sweat under his clothes, taste Nancy's mouth on his tongue. He should want to cry, or rage, and he  _knows_  he's never going to sleep again. But he's pretty sure he's about to start laughing.

Yeah. He's  _absolutely_  lost his mind.

There are a lot of reasons this should be awkward, not least of which happened just about twenty-four hours ago in the spare room of a fortress-like apartment in Bumblyfuck Nowhere, Illinois, but the last time Jonathan saw Steve Harrington he looked like himself, not like raw hamburger. Certainly not like woozy and badly-bandaged raw hamburger.

Does that Band-Aid have  _hearts_  on it?

He can't help it; he gapes at him. Beside him Nancy is doing the same. Steve can barely keep his eyes open, collapsed as he is in Joyce's favorite armchair, but he manages to glare at them both.

"What the hell happened to you?" Jonathan asks.

Steve's glower deepens.

"These little shits," he gestures to the pile of tiny adolescents mostly-asleep on top of each other on the pile of sleeping bags they've dragged, but not unrolled, into the corner, "are the  _worst_  at hiding."

"Fuck you." Dustin's voice is muffled, his face half in a pillow, but he raises his middle finger to drive the point home. Steve gladly flips him off back.

"Does this," Nancy briefly trails off, like she can't believe what she's about to ask and doesn't that just sum up their whole day, "have anything to do with Billy Hargrove being passed out in the hallway?"

They had noticed, sort of, the body in the hallway when they had returned. Noticed, as in they'd all managed not to trip over it while rushing Will to the bathroom, to the bath, to his bed. While his mother settled in next to her youngest, cooing and reassuring. While he and Nancy splashed water on their faces, brushed their teeth, and gave up on showering as soon as the front door opened and the kids came tumbling through. Noticed, as in they'd been pretty sure he wasn't dead. Jonathan's almost positive he saw his chest moving.

But that was half an hour ago at least, and the unmoving body is still there, and that is  _another_  thing that has to be taken care of while they wait for the chief (and Eleven?) to return. He's pretty sure they're not going to the cabin, not with all its windows blown out and its door broken and the cold November air. Maybe Hopper can take care of Billy Hargrove. He sure as hell doesn't want to.

He drags his hands over his face, tired and frustrated, which draws a concerned look from Nancy. A chuckle makes it way past his lips as he sighs, shaking his head as he looks around the room.

"Next time we're doing this at someone else's house," he says.

Steve's barking laughter startles them all. That includes the body in the hall, which starts to groan. Jonathan frowns. Dammit.

Nancy catches his frown and pulls on his waist. He follows her into the kitchen, stepping over Billy's stirring form, and watches her slide a kitchen towel off the oven's handle.  She unfolds it on the counter before turning to him and beckoning him with a wiggling finger. He smirks as he obeys, stepping closer than she anticipates, boxing her in against the counter but keeping his arms crossed over his chest. She rests her hands on his forearms and tugs him down a little until she can press her lips to his. He savors it, how soft she is and how warm, the way her tongue swipes, asking him to open up. Indulges himself for a moment before carefully pulling away.

"You're just buttering me up so you don't have to help with  _him_ ," he says, nodding back towards the hall. She fixes him with her best wide-eyed innocence, but drops it after a second and shrugs.

"Yup. But in exchange, I'll deal with Steve?"

In the second before he steps back from her he thinks about how this night started at dusk when he came home to a house plastered with drawings, led them to the lab and a pack of monster dogs headed to his home, turned into the most terrifying exorcism he could ever imagine, and somehow ended with the most surreal sleepover on earth. What the everloving fuck is his life.

Nancy looks like she's thinking about the same thing as she steps over to his fridge and opens it to get ice. When the dead demodog comes tumbling out she screams.

"What the fuck, what the  _fuck_!"

He's by her side in a flash, pulling her back and into his arms protectively, but his mind has definitely totally fritzed out because all he can think is,  _Oh yeah, that wasn't in the living room anymore_.

"What the fuck," she says again and she's shaking with her back against his chest, so he wraps his arms tightly around her shoulders and rocks her a little. But he's not surprised when she breaks free from him a moment later, eyes blazing, and stomps back out into the living room.

"What the fuck," she yells again, this time rounding on Steve and the kids. Dustin's sitting up now, looking more than a little guilty. "Hey  _assholes,_ what the  _fuck_!"

Jonathan snickers softly. They broke her, he thinks, and now she's lost all her words but curses. It's kinda sexy. He wonders what it would be like to grab her around the waist, pull her back to his bedroom, and kiss the anger out of her.

Goodbye mind. See you again someday. Maybe.

"Look, Nance," Dustin tries. "It's an important scientific discovery—"

" _You_ ," she whips around to point at Steve. "You were supposed to be watching them—"

"You know, he's very convincing—"

"We needed to preserve it, not just bury it—"

"I  _told_  you Dustin—"

"Take it outside. Take it the _fuck_ outside and _burn it_ —"

"Hnngthfuhh—"

The slurred groaning is out of place in this argument and Jonathan turns, looks down at the blonde now properly rousing from unconsciousness on the floor behind him. He considers Billy Hargrove for a moment. He's heard some things, definitely caught the yelling at Tina's Halloween party about him being the keg king. He's got a black eye and some bruising on his cheek, so he may have beat the shit out of Steve but at least Steve landed a few punches too. Good, Jonathan thinks; Billy looks like the kind of douchebag who deserves it.

"The fuck," Billy slurs again. Shaking his head he starts to push himself up, but slips on the drawings he's lying on. One of the kids giggles and Steve shushes them. Jonathan realizes the living room has gone quiet and everyone is watching them.

"W-what--" Billy tries again and successfully makes it up onto one elbow this time. He looks around fuzzily for a moment, then focuses on Jonathan, who is standing at his feet with his hands in his jean pockets. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Who the fuck are  _you_?" Jonathan shoots back, raising an eyebrow. "This is my house."

Whatever Billy's about to say is cut off by the bang of the front door bursting open and hitting the wall. They all startle, whip around, to see Chief Hopper holding a little girl in his arms. She's clearly asleep. Thanks to their entrance, no one in the living room is anymore.

"El!" Mike shouts and scrambles out of the pile of his friends, rushing to her side. "Is she--?"

"She's okay. She's exhausted." Hopper turns to Jonathan. "Is there somewhere she can lay down?"

"I think Mom's room is open. She was with Will in his. If she's in there, you can put her in my room."

"Thanks." Hopper nods and starts to walk across the room but draws up short when he reaches Jonathan's side. Jonathan follows his gaze to the blinking, dazed teen on the floor.

"Who the fuck is this?" he asks softly.

Jonathan is trying to formulate his answer when he hears his mother's footsteps coming down the hall. He knows those footsteps. They're loud, angry. They're her footsteps right before she tells Jonathan to  _be quiet he's waking up the whole damn house._

Joyce Byers appears in the kitchen, eyes blazing.

"What the  _hell_  is going on out here?"

+++

Hopper, bless his heart, deals with Billy.

Jonathan can't hear exactly what he says to him, just watches from his seat at the kitchen table as the police chief crouches over the teen and talks in low tones. Billy looks like a teenager for once – a little afraid and a lot confused in the face of actual authority. Cracks in the façade.

Nancy sits close to him on his left hand side, playing with the fingers on his scarred hand under the table and casting looks down the hall that leads to his mother's bedroom. That's where her younger brother is sitting attentively at the bedside of a 13-year-old escaped experiment who apparently just used her mind to close an enormous gash between dimensions and came out alive.

What a sentence  _that_  is, he thinks.

To his right, Steve is sitting in the chair his brother usually occupies at their kitchen table, watching with a kind of smug amusement as Hopper leans closer and Billy turns paler.

"I don't know how well that smirk goes with your broken nose," Jonathan says before he can help himself. Steve turns to look at him, eyes a little cold.

"I'll make it work," he says. His gaze moves between Jonathan and Nancy, who is still looking down the hall. "I always make it work."

"Good then!" Hopper is suddenly loud and jovial. He claps Billy hard on the shoulder, then offers a hand to help him to his feet. The California boy turns slowly and looks back at the three teens sitting at the table. They meet his gaze. After a moment, Jonathan raises his hand and waves slightly.

Billy mutters something under his breath, which none of them can hear, but his discomfort is visible from a dozen feet away. Steve snickers.

"C'mon Max," Billy says gruffly, turning back to the living room. He moves towards the kids – still piled together, dropping in and out of sleep – but seems to think better of it. Hopper is still watching him closely as he waits.

"What?" the little redhead replies. "No way. I'm not leaving them."

"Susan and my dad sent me out to find you. It's the middle of the goddamn night, I'm not going home without you."

"I said no—"

"Get up, kid," Hopper interjects. "Get home. Your parents are worried."

"That's not fair—"

"This is not a discussion," Hopper says firmly. Jonathan smirks, wonders if he uses that same tone with Eleven. Wonders if that's why all the windows in the cabin were blown out when they got there. "Go. Home."

"This is bullshit," Max mutters, but she's getting up and grabbing her jacket. She casts a long look back at the boys, all watching slightly dumbfounded.

"Come back tomorrow," Dustin finally suggests. "We'll be here."

"Don't we have school?"

Fuck, Jonathan thinks.  _Fuck._ They do have school. He looks at Steve. Steve who definitely needs stitches and probably has a concussion. Steve who will probably  _not_  be at school tomorrow. Or at least, he hopes. He feels Nancy's fingers dig into his palm and realizes she probably will be. Unless they can come up with a good excuse.

Him, he'll be home until Will and his mom feel like the world isn't ending anymore. So, he guesses, some time after Thanksgiving.

"Fuck," Nancy breathes beside him. He turns to look at her and she's already looking at him, eyes wide with fear. But not the fear he saw in them when the fought the monster last year, or in the lab when they were shown the gate, or even as they pulled up to Murray's home. She suddenly looks like the 17-year-old girl she is, who knows how much trouble she's about to be in. He really, really wants to kiss her.

"What?" he asks instead.

"I have to call my mom," she says softly. "Mike and I were supposed to be home  _hours_ ago."

"Um," Steve pipes up, glancing over at the wall. Jonathan follows his gaze and only now registers the empty space where the phone should be. "You kinda broke their phone."

He has no idea why that's what does it. Why that's the straw that breaks his proverbial camel's back. But suddenly he is laughing.

It starts soft but doesn’t stay that way, builds to a roar until he's doubled over at the kitchen table, forehead against the wood. Full body-shaking belly laughs. His cheeks hurt from it and tears leak out of his eyes and he can feel Nancy's fingers tightening around his. Imagines she's looking between him and Steve with undisguised concern. Maybe it's panic, or something close to it. But he can't stop.

It's too much. Everything is too fucking much. He exposed a government conspiracy and fucked the girl he's been dreaming about and burned a goddamn demon out of his brother and he reeks and wants to sleep for a thousand years and never sleep again and there's  _school_  tomorrow, and it's just too  _fucking much_.

"Jonathan!" Nancy is saying his name over and over again, pawing at his shoulder to get him to look at her.

It takes a minute but he finds the strength in his arms and manages to push himself up, wipe the tears from his cheeks, and then push himself further, onto his feet. His legs feel like spaghetti and his knees almost buckle but he manages to stay upright. The entire room is looking at him. Everyone looks very, very worried.

He fixes his gaze on Hopper, who is still standing in the hallway, deciding he is the safest place to look.

"I'm gonna take a shower," he announces and doesn't wait for a response before shuffling down the hall. He is grateful his legs still hold.

He skips the bathroom, veers right to Will's room, and his mother is waiting for him in the doorway. She looks more alarmed than anyone.

"Jonathan," she says softly and he doesn't hesitate, just envelopes her in a hug. She bathed with Will and she smells like safety and soap and he breathes her in. Tries not to think about whether she'll have bruises on her neck in the morning.

"Oh, sweetie," she murmurs into the side of his head and rocks him slightly. Something inside his chest starts to crack.

He pulls away with a deep breath, moves to the bed, to Will. He's nodding in and out of sleep, pulling his eyes open to try to meet his gaze. Jonathan leans down and hugs him as best he can, gives into an urge he hasn't had since Will was really small and presses a long kiss to his forehead.

"You're alive," he whispers against his brother's skin and feels his thin arms tighten around his shoulders.

"I'm alive," Will repeats. The crack grows wider.

He manages to remember to grab a handful of fresh clothes from his dresser before he stumbles into the bathroom. He only barely manages to get the shower on and into it before he starts to cry.

+++

Nancy's waiting on his bed when he gets out of the shower. Her hair is wet and she's wearing one of his shirts and a clean pair of his boxers  ( _they match_ , he thinks distantly) and she's wrapping her fingers into knots around themselves. He freezes in the doorway and she looks up.

"I used your mom's shower," she explains. Like that's the reason he has to focus to get his legs to work.

Carefully, quietly he steps into the room and closes the door behind him. She fills the silence quickly.

"Hopper's taking Steve to the hospital, and Dustin and Lucas home. Mike won't leave if Eleven is still here and they can't go back to the cabin during the night while it's this broken. I'm not going home without Mike."

"Oh," he says and drops his dirty clothes into the hamper in the corner of his room. "Did you, uh, talk to your mom?"

She gives him a small smile, looking slightly embarrassed.

"I broke your phone less than I thought," she says and chews on the tip of her thumb. "Your mom called for us."

He raises an eyebrow at her.

"How'd  _that_  go?"

She rolls her eyes at him.

"Well, I'm still here."

When she says it so plainly it's surprising. He turns that over in his head and finds he has nothing to say. He crosses to the other side of his bed and sits on the edge, grabs the top tape from the stack on his nightstand and shoves it into his stereo. Usually he'd put on his headphones but he's not alone for once so he pulls the cord out before he hits play. Slides the volume down just in time not to draw his mother's attention.

Nancy watches him as he stretches out with his back against his pillow and the wall and his arms loosely crossed over his chest. He feels her gaze travel along his bare legs and he resists the urge to put them under the covers. He's allowed to be exposed in his own home. In his own room. But he doesn't want to bare anything more.

"How long are you grounded for?" he asks instead. She snorts and shifts a little closer, sitting crosslegged on his sheets. She looks like she wants to get even closer. He definitely wants to let her.

"Undetermined," she admits. "I'm guessing this is my last night out of the house for a while."

"We should probably make it count, then."

It pops out of his mouth before he can even think it fully, and her mouth drops open in complete shock. Jonathan can feel his ears burning but he also can't help but delight in her expression. Nancy looks positively  _scandalized._

 _"_ J-Jonathan," she chokes out but that's all she can get out before she dissolves into laughter. He's right behind her, covering his face with his hands and trying to scrub the embarrassment away a little bit.

"I don't know," he giggles. "I really don't. I think I'm losing it."

When they calm down she smiles at him and catches her bottom lip between her teeth and he reaches out to her with his left arm and that's all it takes. She curls into his side easily, comfortably, like the space for her has already been carved out of his body and his life.

"You're not losing it," she says into his shirt. He hums his disagreement.

"Mm, pretty sure I am."

"Well, I'll join you then. Let's lose it together."

He manages to bite back a joke about having been there and done that. Good to know he's getting a little brain-mouth control back.

"Oh just say it." She sounds mostly amused.

He frowns. He doesn't like having his mind read.

"No. I'm a better guy than that."

Nancy shifts so she's looking at him with her head still on his shoulder.

"You are," she says softly.

He sighs deeply. Nancy uses the arm draped around his middle to give him squeeze.

"Do you want to try to sleep?" she murmurs. He shakes his head. He doesn't want to hear Will's screams. 

They're both quiet for a minute. In the background an austere melody winds through the room. Jonathan waits for the beat to come in, holds his breath.

"Who is this?" she asks. "Tell me about it."

He does.

+++

Jonathan Byers knows for a fact that he is really, truly, fantastically good at one thing, and that one thing is breakfast.

The sun came up a few hours ago, and he's grown bored of watching the sky lighten. So he untangles himself from Nancy, careful not to wake her, pulls on a pair of jeans and tiptoes out into the hallway of the silent house. He can hear Hopper snoring on the couch, and he thinks everyone else is probably still asleep. It's been a fitful night for them all; stressed out people sleep better in the morning, he's found.

Someone has pulled all the drawings off the walls, of the hallway and kitchen at least, cleaned the fridge and put the groceries back in. Most of them were still good, just a few hours out. A lot of the jars were broken and someone – the same person, he'd guess - cleaned up the glass. That… _thing_ is gone, too. He hopes whoever disposed of it burned it.

There's still eggs, and cheese, and bread, and butter. He grabs a fork and a bowl and does a few mental calculations. There's him and Nancy, his mom and Will, Hopper and Eleven, and Mike. Usually he'd do two eggs for each but they've only got 10. That'll have to be enough.

He wonders if there's bacon, and maybe potatoes? Maybe they still have that bag of hash browns in the freezer.

He should make coffee too. He doesn't usually like coffee but this feels like a good morning for it. Maybe it'll help his headache.

He's so lost in thought he doesn’t notice Will is up until his brother is hugging him.

He nearly jumps out of his skin, definitely gasps loud enough to wake someone up. But Will just holds on tighter. When Jonathan regains control of his body he squeezes his brother tight to his chest, nearly lifting him off the ground. They cling to each other for a long moment, until Jonathan's heartbeat goes back to normal and something between his shoulders starts to loosen.

"Hey bud," he says into Will's hair. "How're you feeling?"

"Actually," Will sounds like he's trying to puzzle out a difficult riddle, "not so bad?"

They release each other at the same time, take a step apart. Will's brow is furrowed, but he's smiling slightly.

"I mean, this hurts." Will gestures to his leg where Nancy burned him the night before. They cleaned and dressed the wound in Hopper's cabin but he probably needs a visit to a doctor anyway. Jonathan briefly wonders if there's a word for when your new lover/girlfriend/possible love of your life burns your little brother to save him from what is in essence demonic possession. Probably, in German.

"Definitely better than last time," he adds. Jonathan's pretty sure he feels another laughing fit bubbling under his sternum. Will gives him a smile that means he feels the same.

"Well, why don't you make the coffee. And then go wake up Mom, she'll have a heart attack if you're not there," he instructs. Will frowns.

"I'm not good at the coffee."

"Can't be worse than me."

"Is that a challenge?"

Jonathan's almost taken aback. He knows his brother's breakdown is coming, knows there's no way he could survive two days of _that_ unscathed. But the kid in front of him is the same one who taunts him over Atari games and makes veiled references to his feelings for Nancy at the dinner table just to goad him, and Jonathan almost can't believe it. How can his brother have his shit together when _he_ feels like he's on the verge of falling apart?

Will turns to dig the coffee grounds out of their designated pantry spot but freezes. Jonathan follows his gaze and sees a small form in the doorway, skinny limbed in too-big clothes, hair still gelled back. Eleven still has two pink stains under her nose but she looks awake and healthier than he's ever seen her. She's staring at Will with the same wide-eyed wonder coming from his little brother.

"Will," she says softly and takes a step towards him.

"Eleven," he answers and then they're hugging too. Jonathan watches in wonder as they clutch at each other for a long moment, then pull back to stare at each other.

Will speaks first.

"I've heard—I wasn't sure if you were real. I saw you… and Mike and Lucas and Dustin talked about you all the time but—I just didn't—I'm glad you're here."

It takes Jonathan a second to remember the middle school and their kiddie pool, right before everything went to hell. He realizes Will's never actually met Eleven before. He can hardly believe it.

They're talking in excited but hushed tones, trying not to wake up the adults and maybe keep some secrets from him too. He's so distracted trying to overhear them he misses Nancy's footsteps across the kitchen and jumps when she slips her arm around his waist.  

" _Jesus_." He frowns at her. "What's with everyone sneaking up on me this morning?"

"I think you're a little out of it." She runs her fingers through his hair, smoothes it down a bit. Will and Eleven have stopped talking and are watching them closely. She's still in his t-shirt and boxers and now in the morning light the sight of her slim frame in his clothes finally moves past the outer membrane of his brain, down his spine and right into his pants. He clears his throat and turns back to the eggs.

"Will," he says. "Coffee."

"Right," Will says slowly, eyes moving back and forth between them. "Coffee."

Nancy still has her arm around him. He tries to memorize its feel, its weight, its warmth for when she's gone and the house is a little lonelier. He wonders if he'll be sneaking into her room after dark now, or maybe she'll come over after school when his mom is at work. They didn't talk about it; at first it was too awkward, then it was too unimportant. Now… now he thinks maybe he doesn't want to know.

She nuzzles her nose in between his shoulder blades and he reconsiders. Maybe it's not all bad news all the time anymore.

"Can I help with anything?" she asks. She's tired, he can hear it in her voice, and leaning heavily against him. He starts cracking eggs into the bowl.

"No, I've got it."

"Did you sleep at all?"

He sighs.

"Not really. Maybe a little. Maybe," he glances back over his shoulder but he can really only see the top of her head. "You sleep ok?"

"Yeah," she says, sounding slightly surprised at herself. "Actually, I, um…"

He stops cracking eggs when she slides under his arm, slipping between him and the counter. Hooks her fingers into the belt loops at the front of his jeans, tugs slightly. He looks between her hands and face, and something shifts deep in his belly.

"You weren't there when I woke up," she says softly, so soft he can barely hear her. Has to lean down, put their faces closer together.

"Yeah, I, uh, I couldn't sleep so… Breakfast."

"I was having this dream, but… you weren't there."

He frowns and is about to ask her if everything is okay, if she had a nightmare, but she tugs on his belt loops instead, pulling him flush against her. There's something sly and very warm behind her eyes and his mouth goes completely dry.

"O-oh."

She smirks her agreement, cocking her head to the side. It would be so easy to close to small gap between them, to press her into his kitchen counter, maybe lift he on top of it for a better angle, but his little brother is just a few feet away and he's suddenly aware that the conversation between him and Eleven has ceased.

So has Hopper's snoring for that matter.

Oh, he has a bad feeling about this.

"Uh," Will says behind him. "Morning, Chief."

He wonders if you can will yourself into spontaneous combustion. More specifically, if  _he_  can will  _himself_  into spontaneous combustion. His face feels hot enough that it might work but he's not actually on fire. Not yet.

Nancy lets go of his jeans, he takes a step back, and she scurries to the other side of the kitchen, making herself look busy. He's still got empty eggshells in his hands and tries to go back to cracking eggs like he didn't just get caught mid-seduction.

When he chances a glance over his shoulder Hopper is smirking at him too, even as he crosses over to ruffle Eleven's hair. She glares at him when he does, but there's no anger behind it. It sticks up funny, still gelled mostly into place.

Hopper looks like he wants to say a lot of things, and takes some time to think about it before settling on an opener.

"Is there coffee?"

It doesn't take too long for the rest of the house to wake up. Jonathan watches Mike come skidding in while he's making the eggs, frantically searching the room for Eleven, or Will, or both, before finding them at the kitchen table and joining them as Will talks the girl through one of his comic books. His mom comes in last, steps slow and heavy. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she still looks exhausted, and Hopper's by her side instantly, head bent in quiet conversation.

He tries not to spy, spoons eggs onto plates instead as Nancy turns the rest of their loaf of bread into toast.

The have to drag all the chairs from the dining room table to fit them at the tiny kitchen table. He ends up eating at the counter, preferring a place to put his plate over a place to put his butt.

He had a cup of Will's truly awful coffee, but his headache is worse and he can't stop yawning. He squeezes the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes, but it doesn't do much. When he opens his eyes again, Nancy is standing in front of him.

"You need to get some sleep," she says. He shakes his head.

"I'm fine."

"You're not. You're exhausted."

"I'm  _fine_ ," he repeats, sharper this time. Nancy huffs and crosses her arms over her chest. They stare each other down, a stubbornness battle, and then Nancy reaches out and grabs his earlobe between her thumb and forefinger.

"Ow!" he yelps, but she holds firm. "What the hell, Nancy—"

She doesn't answer him, just starts dragging him by the ear to his room. He catches a glimpse of his mother, eyebrows up to her hairline, and Will, laughing behind his hand, before Nancy steers him into his room and towards his bed, closing the door behind her.

"What the hell!" he says again, shaking her off. She shoves him, lightly, and his legs hit the bed. Another shove, and he's got nowhere to go so he sits. From his position she towers over him.

"Lay down," she says, and pokes his shoulder. When he doesn't move she pokes harder and it hurts, so he complies, grumbling the whole way. She sits next to him on the edge of his bed, and maneuvers him until his head is on the pillow.

"Screw you." He is not amused.

"Shut up. Close your eyes."

He doesn't want to obey her, doesn't want to give in, wants to keep glaring until he wins this battle of wills, but his head is still pounding and his eyelids feel so heavy. They slip shut without his permission.

After a few seconds he feels her hand on his cheek. Her fingers slide up to his hair and start combing through it. If he were less tired, he would definitely be pissed about how good it feels.

"Jonathan," her voice is soft again, melodic, soothing. "Sleep."

"I'm fine," he says again but it ends on a yawn.

She doesn't reply, just keeps stroking his hair. That's fine. He'll let her do it, let her make herself feel better. And his headache is a little better with his eyes closed. In his darker room. He'll placate her. And then he'll go back out there and be with his family.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before he realizes she's stopped stroking his hair and has put a blanket on top of him. When he opens his eyes the shadows in his room are longer and Nancy is gone and there are government agents in suits in his living room.

+++

He waits to call until the sun has almost set, until his mom and Will have gone with the government men to a hospital to have Will officially checked out. Not the lab; the lab stinks of blood and death and probably still has bodies inside. He doesn't like the government men, doesn't trust them and doesn't want to be anywhere near them. When Joyce offers Jonathan an opportunity to stay home instead of going with them he takes it.

The silence when they leave is unbearable.

He finishes cleaning up the remnants of their late sandwich lunch, then works on cleaning the kitchen and the living room. They've already boarded up the front window but he double checks the floor for glass and rearranges all their books and magazines. The government men took all of Will's drawings. Of course they did.

When he runs out of redundant cleaning, he gives up, goes to his room, pulls on his headphones and puts on a record. He tries to stare at the walls and let his mind drift as usual but he feels tight in his own skin, restless. He wishes Nancy was still there.

The internal battle is mercifully short before he pulls the headphones off and rolls out of bed with a huff.

The phone works but it's not mounted on the wall anymore and the cords are long enough that he can pull it down the hall most of the way to his room, which leaves him enough slack to sit on his floor with his back up against his bed as he dials her number. The number for her bedroom phone, not the house phone. She gave it to him a year ago and he'd had it memorized in a night, but he'd barely used it since.

Not anymore.

She answers after two rings, and with his name. It makes something in the pit of his stomach flutter.

"Jonathan?"

"Hey."

"Hi! Hold on."

He hears rustling in the background and a click, realizes she's closed her bedroom door. His neck is warm under his collar.

"Hey," she says again, sounding a little breathless. He closes his eyes and imagines her curls settling around her face as she sits down.

"So how bad is it?" he asks. Her laugh is low and resigned.

"Well, right now, it's for the rest of the month. They let me keep the phone but I've got a time limit. Just wait – my mom will be in my room in exactly fifteen minutes."

He groans. That sounds awful. He's been yelled at plenty, but he's never really been grounded. No point when you really have friends to go out with in the first place. But even when he was in trouble his mom at least let him have his space.

"Buuuut," she continues, her voice softer and mischievous. "I think I can get my sentence reduced for good behavior."

"I bet," he laughs. "If there's anyone who could charm their way out of being grounded, I'd put my money on you."

She laughs at that and he's taken, for a moment, by how  _normal_  this is, how anyone with a peephole into his life would think he was just a 17-year-old boy talking to his girlfriend in his bedroom, no monsters or government agencies or apocalyptic dangers now or ever. Just a teenage boy home alone and the girl he's crazy for on the other line. And for at least the third time in the last twenty-four hours, his mouth gets completely ahead of his brain.

"It's a shame, though, I've got the whole house to myself."

It comes out low and seductive and somewhere underneath the shock and mortification that floods him, Jonathan is quite impressed he pulls it off.

By the way her breath catches across the phone line, he thinks Nancy might agree.

"That's not fair," she murmurs. "You're supposed to help me get  _less_ grounded, not more."

"How's that?"

"If I sneak out now I'm definitely on lockdown 'til Christmas."

He breathes more than he chuckles like that, shifts to alleviate some of the heat that keeps rippling through him. She's teased him before, and he's teased her, but they kept such a careful distance between them for the last year. Maybe less of a wall and more of a fence – glances and touches and feelings seemed to slip through no matter how hard they tried – but a barrier nonetheless. He isn't used to flirting with her, not like this.

"What are we doing?" he asks before he can stop himself. Dammit, he'd like his brain-mouth control back again,  _please_.

"Talking? On the phone?" The lightness in her tone is forced.

"Nancy."

"I don't know," she admits, and he can almost hear her shrug. "But can we… can we keep doing it?"

He's quiet a minute, turning that over in his head. On the one hand, he wants definition, wants to bring this big grey area they've live in for the last year into sharp focus, set boundaries, give labels. He wants to know if she's going to claim him and name him in the halls of their school and at the movie theater and in her parents' dining room, instead of just in his car or a motel or a guest room while the world is ending.

And on the other hand this feels… good. And maybe he should just try… feeling good?

"Talking on the phone?"

The pause was too long and it takes her a second to catch on to his quip.

"Sure," she says slowly. "And… the other things. Too."

It occurs to him for the first time that she might be shy. He doesn't know why he didn't consider that before. Maybe because she didn't hesitate to crawl through a tree into an alternate dimension or nail a bear trap into his hallway floor. Because she's always seemed so fearless, so brave.

"Yeah," he smiles into the receiver. "Yeah, we can. We should."

"Good," she says on an out breath. He wonders if her heart is beating as hard as his. "That's good."

"The other stuff's gonna be kinda hard when you're on house arrest."

She laugh-groans and it's not supposed to be sexy, he knows it's not, but he immediately starts thinking of ways he can pull that sound out of her in the future.

"You're not helping!"

She sounds so frustrated and so pleased, it pulls a laugh from him as well.

"So what did my mom tell your mom, anyway?" He's been wondering since the night before.

"Oh god," she groans. "Your mom is a  _terrible_  liar."

He tips his head back against his mattress as she talks, winds the spiral cord around his index finger, watches the tip turn purple then releases it. Feels something deep in his chest start to unwind a little bit.

Her mom interrupts over and over and she has to plead for more time, but it's full dark when they finally hang up.

+++

Against all expectations, he goes back to school the next week. Will's not alright, and his mom's _definitely_ not alright, but there's only so much they can do sitting around the house all day, only so many days of work his mom can miss. Only so many absences he can rack up before he has to do summer school.

It's a little like Dorothy waking up at the end of the Wizard of Oz. _You were there_ , he thinks as he walks the halls, _and you were there, and_ you _were there._

Steve is there, nose still swollen and bruises fading into green along his cheek and forehead. He looks at Jonathan cautiously but with relief, like he's glad he's okay. Jonathan knows they need to do more than silently acknowledge each other in the hallway; he needs to thank Steve for coming back – twice now – without the reasons he and Nancy have. Needs to make sure the other boy knows he never meant to slip into the middle of his relationship, that he just found himself there and for once, just once, he decided to be selfish. And that he can't, he won't, regret that choice, but he does regret that he was kind of a dick about it.

Billy is there, quieter and wary when no one is looking. He looks at Jonathan like he's scared of him – not physically scared, existentially scared, as if he's a talisman that holds the power to unleash unspeakable evil. Maybe he's remembering the child's drawing maze on the walls of his house, or whatever the chief told him. He blusters and boasts when people are paying attention, but maybe when he's out of their sight he looks like the lost, sad teenager he is.

Jonathan doesn't really care as long as Billy keeps his hands off his friends.

Nancy is there, surprised and excited and more than a little concerned. She watches him from across the hall and across the classroom, but hasn't been able to make it to his side quite yet. She keeps being waylaid by girls asking about her breakup with Steve.

He eats on the hood of his car and the sun is bright but cold and he realizes this is probably the last week he'll get to do this. Winter is right around the corner and he'll have to go back inside. He's got a corner of the cafeteria he prefers, but he wonders if it's insane to eat _in_ his car instead. Will turning on the heat eat up all his meager gas money?

"Hey."

Nancy is standing in front of him, smiling cautiously. He hasn't seen her in seven days and can't help but drink her in. Can't hold back his smile. He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holing when she returns it.

"Hey."

She climbs up next to him, close enough that she has to move his paper bag lunch out of the way so she can press her thigh against hers.

"You didn't say you were coming back so soon. I have a bunch of homework for you."

"Oh, gee. Thanks."

It comes out more sarcastic than he really means it, but the thought of a week of catch up homework isn't the most appealing. It never is, but especially not when your little brother is having nightmares about smoke monsters and you're barely sleeping.

He surprises a laugh out of her, and there's something about that, something about how clear and musical her voice is and the way her eyes sparkle, and he just can't help himself, he leans forward and presses his lips to hers. He feels her sharp intake of breath, feels her exhale on his cheek, and then she's holding onto his upper arms and pressing closer. His sandwich falls, forgotten, to the ground.

He's never kissed a girl in the parking lot of his school before. Never pressed her back onto the hood of his car and maneuvered himself over her so he could kiss her deeper, could move his mouth to her jaw and her neck. Never felt her arms wind around his neck, tugging him closer. Those things happen to other boys, not him, not Jonathan Byers the town freak, the pervert, the white trash creep who couldn't even keep track of his little brother.

Nancy moans softly and tugs on him again and he concentrates on leaving a purple bruise on her collarbone underneath her turtleneck sweater.

Oh yeah, he's lost his mind. 

He hopes it never comes back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i really, really, really like writing jonathan byers. 
> 
> title is from "where is my mind," by the pixies. using the actual song title with this fic would have been waaaaaaaay too on the nose.


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